


don’t say you love me, that’s extortion

by LowerEastSide



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Picnics, Quiet, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-07 17:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LowerEastSide/pseuds/LowerEastSide
Summary: Harry is only allowed to say it when Draco is asleep.





	don’t say you love me, that’s extortion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magpie_fngrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_fngrl/gifts).



> What can I say, Magpie? Your writing has been inspiring me since the moment I found your works. You're an amazing writer, a wonderful person in fandom, and I'm so lucky I've had the opportunity to know you. May you have a wonderful birthday!
> 
> Thank you to Bixgirl for the beta read and assurance. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Title (and one line-ish) from Volunteer Pioneer's song "Separate Planes"
> 
> _But don’t say you love me that’s extortion_  
>  _I thought it was you and I who’d turn this city into an ocean_

~~~

Harry is only allowed to say it when Draco is asleep.

He whispers it into the pale shell of an ear, worried the tickle of his breath will wake his slumbering lover. He’s got nothing to fear; the nightmares have passed, and Draco sleeps like the dead.

~~~

One year, eight months, seventeen days. Harry can count them as easily as the steps in Grimmauld Place. One, two, three: a splintered crack near the entrance. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine: the number of times Harry took Draco out to dinner, or dancing, or arranged to meet him in the park, before their naked bodies finally slid along each other like tectonic plates. Draco wasn’t playing hard to get, it was Harry who’d been doubtful. But once Harry fell, he fell hard.

Twenty-one, twenty-two. The landing outside his bedroom. It always smells of Draco now; he never closes the door of the shower, and jasmine-scented steam billows out in clouds to settle in the drapery.

Harry adores it.

~~~

Draco keeps his distance with surnames, with schedules, with his own flat. It is Harry who always reaches to bridge the gap. Draco allows it, though, allows himself to be touched and courted and lured into sleeping over. Once tumbled into Harry’s bed there is no physical demarcation between them. Harry crosses Draco’s borders as a tourist, with the bittersweet expectation the time spent mapping the contours of his body will be temporary. Draco, for his part, is eager to give Harry the Grand Tour.

There was a time when Harry thought Draco might lose control and gasp it out loud. Maybe from above, seated on Harry’s cock, his back in a perfect arch as he flexed and canted towards a messy climax. Or maybe from behind, growling into Harry’s neck as he obliterated all the empty space between, going deeper, _deeper._ Maybe even in one of those rare, quiet moments, when they lay on their sides with Harry behind, softly sighing as Draco rocks back into him, their shadowed forms barely moving in the dark. Harry curls a hand around to pinch one peaked nipple, and Draco brings the hand to his face, licks the palm, whispers something into it.

Harry strains to hear, but his cock has other ideas, and pleasure ramps up until everything is white noise.

~~~

Picnics are Draco’s favorite. Harry had been charmed to find this out, watching as Draco carefully folded a checkered cloth over small boxes of even smaller sandwiches, and fruit and jam and biscuits, and nestled the whole lot into a basket he could hardly carry. When Harry suggested a Shrinking charm, Draco had turned his nose up. “That’s missing the point, isn’t it?” They always sit under a spreading tree, no matter the park. Draco has a knack for location.

It was at one of these perfect picnics that Harry first tried to tell him. Tried to describe the emotion that was filling his chest, rising like mercury. A thousand golden words must exist in the human language for this feeling, but Harry only knows three.

He’d managed the pronoun and the liquid sonorant before Draco put a finger on Harry’s lips.

“Don’t.”

“But…”

“Please, Harry. We’re having such a wonderful time.”

It stung so much that Harry wondered if a bee had wandered over to investigate the jam, before he realised the pain was in his heart.

“Why?” he asks, only once. He trusts Draco to tell him the truth, if nothing else. They’ve been going out for six months.

“My parents told me they loved me,” is Draco’s answer. He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t try to give Harry some deep psychological explanation. Harry can parse that for himself. Love is no guarantee of trust or safety. Actions speak louder than words.

So Harry helps pack the baskets, and waves away the bees.

~~~

Their second anniversary is spent outdoors as well. Harry wonders if Draco chooses picnics and parks in a bid for freedom. The Ministry offices are stifling for both of them; Harry at least enjoys the respite of field work.

They tour the residence and grounds at Syon Park. Draco nods politely at the lavishly decorated rooms of the house and the perfectly manicured garden beside it, but his face lights up when they come to the Tide Meadow. The ground is too wet to set out a basket, so they stand on the riverbank and eat their finger sandwiches as Draco excitedly points out birds in the water or swinging on reeds. Harry watches his face with unadulterated adoration, soaking up Draco’s pleasure as if it were his own.

At some point he notices the tide is rising on the Thames. It’s choppy, in a way rivers seldom are, and Harry voices his concern.

“Don’t worry, Potter. It’s a simple spell to calm it.” Draco glances sideways, a rare grin on his face. “Or to cause a flood. You and I could turn this whole city into an ocean, I’d wager.”

Harry feels his heart overflow. Draco, of course, doesn’t _want_ to turn London into Atlantis. But if he did, they’d do it together. You and I. Harry and Draco, Draco and Harry. A unit, a couple, a dynamic duo.

If they were anyone else, this would be the time and place for declarations. But they _are_ no one else, they belong to no one but themselves, are beholden to no language but that of their deeds.

Harry takes Draco’s hand as soon as the sandwiches are gone, eager to close the gap.

“You’ve never tried to say it again.”

Now Harry is the silent one. Draco smiles, a tiny smile, pleased that Harry finally understands.

“You know I do, don’t you? The empty space you imagined, it’s not there. It’s full.”

“Full of what?”

“Us, Harry.”

~~~

Harry no longer surreptitiously whispers in Draco’s ear. Now he leans over, inhales until his lungs are filled with jasmine and the musk of sex and _Draco,_ and exhales all of his love to surround them.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://lower-east-side.tumblr.com/)


End file.
